WORD COUNT 2000 .
REFERENCING APA7
Your inquiry-based learning (IBL) folio will plan, design, and annotate a project-focused nature folio that could choose one of the following ideas to explore:
• A particular animal or plant species.
• Aspects of place, such as local landmarks, land formations, oceans, or mountains.
• Natural materials that are used in a nature curriculum, such as stones, seedpods, or water.
• Exploring relational connections with humans and the more-the-human.
• An environmental problem.
Your inquiry-based learning folio should adhere to the following format and include the required headings:
Rationale (approximately 800 words)
First, describe a rationale for why inquiry-based learning is an effective approach for nature pedagogies using research from the readings and learning materials to build your discussion. What’s the role of the adult, children, and families in IBL? What are the principles of designing and implementing an IBL approach? Provide a summary of the scope of regulatory requirements, including how you will balance risk, resilience and planning to extend new skills and learning.
Second, how do you decide what’s worth pursuing? How can you choose a worthwhile topic of nature inquiry, while adhering to the principles of an IBL approach so that it does not become a theme-based project? Are you clear about the difference? How will you include one or more of the children described in the following child profiles?
Child profiles
Inquiry-based learning places the child at the centre of the inquiry; the role of the teacher is to guide, challenge, encourage, and collaborate with the active learning process. This is facilitated by questioning, scaffolding, and listening, rather than telling and controlling. In this way, teachers assist children to build skills and knowledge, as well as their own learning. Because you are not using this pedagogical approach with actual children, the following six child profiles have been included to help design your IBL folio with children in mind. You can add more elements to their profiles, including family members, other interests, events, needs, and abilities. Please note these profiles have been adapted from Cohrssen, Hedge, Hill, Madanipour, and Stewart's work (2020).
1. Hudson is 14 months. He is exploring the outdoor environment looking closely at a garden bed and begins to pick up pieces of bark and leaves. He notices the ants crawling along the edge of the garden bed. When an educator walks past, Hudson calls out and points to the ants he has been watching.
2. Five-year-olds Priyanka and Joshua are dancing around like butterflies outside, spreading their arms wide for wings as they flap and run. Priyanka stops, sits on the ground, pulls her arms into her chest and tells Joshua that 'the butterfly is sad and does not want to dance anymore'. Joshua sits beside her and suggests in a sad voice, 'maybe the butterfly is sad because she lost her home.'
3. Malik is four years old. He has just joined the kindergarten group after his family moved to the area from India. English is his second language and Hindi is mostly spoken at home. The teacher observes how Malik spends a lot of time watching the other children; however, he has not yet interacted a great deal with them. Then one day, the children are outside pretending to be cows and Malik becomes very animated and tries to join in. When the teacher shares this observation with the parents, they also become animated, relaying how Malik loves cows and knows a lot about them as they used to have a cow at their home in India that he milked, and who he greatly misses.
4. Eighteen-month-old Jesse and three-year-old Tao are outside in the playspace looking at flowers in a large pot. Tao finds a flower on the floor and gives it to Jesse. Jesse laughs and Tao says, 'you are meant to smell it.' Jesse looks at the flower and then tries to pick more from the flowerpot. Tao tells Jesse, 'we only pick up flowers that have fallen on the ground, we don’t pull them off the plants.'
5. Sadie and Hazel are both two years old. They are exploring shells on an interest table that has books and posters about shells and a variety of seashells. The teachers note how they do different things with the shells as Sadie carefully lines them all in a row and Hazel places them in different size baskets. Hazel says that one of the shells is from a snail.
6. Five-year-old Chance often plays on his own and is engaged with building tasks, blocks and painting. Chance’s mother is a building engineer, and she has offered to come to the education setting to talk with the children about creating buildings and what they are made from. The teacher asks Chance about a picture he has drawn that looks like a vehicle that has huge tyres, with someone driving it. Chance talks about the intricate details of his car and asks the teacher, 'why are all tyres black?'
Visual IBL design plan and documentation (approximately 1200 words)
First, integrate and describe a range of directions for the inquiry that explore examples of what you will do, including how you will:
• develop ideas and concepts in the pre-planning stage of this teacher-led inquiry
• design learning strategies that are engaging and motivating and enable deeper inquiry and research
• involve children in the learning process
• document and assess their ideas and nature learnings
• plan and manage ethical dilemmas
• integrate regulatory requirements, including how you balance risk, resilience and new skills.
Second, consider how you will create a visual map of what this would look like in your folio:
• Use diagrams, photographs and/or illustrations to illustrate your design. They should also include clear descriptions of what they are and must be referenced correctly.
• Create digital documentation for your folio where the learning of teachers and children are visible.
• Include any resources such as books, posters, and play props.
• Save your report as a PDF—the formatting with other types of documents can move when uploaded through Canvas.
Reference list
All sources used should be acknowledged and referenced with APA in-text citations and the creation of a comprehensive APA reference list.
Essential reading
It is essential that you keep up to date with the readings and learning materials as inquiry-based learning is featured throughout the unit.
In addition to the readings, it would be wise to write detailed class notes or a journal of the class discussions and group activities as these have been designed to scaffold your learning for writing this assignment.
Throughout your teaching and learning journey, you will be required to use the nationally approved learning frameworks (the Early Years Learning Framework or the Australian Curriculum) or the approved learning frameworks for your state or territory. To help you further build capability in this area, and to prepare you for placements, at Swinburne Online you may choose to use the nationally approved learning frameworks or the approved learning frameworks for your state or territory in your assignments. For further information specific to your assignments for this specific unit, please seek advice from your eLAs and/or your Unit Coordinator.
Supporting resources
The following resources will assist you with completing this assignment:
• The Mudbook: Nature Play FrameworkLinks to an external site. (Childhoodnature, n.d.)
• Chapter 2: Risk-taking in outdoor play. Challenges and possibilitiesLinks to an external site. (Little, 2017, pp. 19–38).
• Chapter 7: Application of standards and regulations to early years outdoor playspacesLinks to an external site. (Jeavons, et al., 2017, pp.120–143).